Nostalgic Innocence
by EVOLustory
Summary: Where Gintoki and Hijikata meet in grade school and gift the world with their double-trouble mayhem. Or: The adventures and worries of two boys as they progress through the hell that is known as modern-day public school.
1. Pilot

**AN:** So this is being reposted from my AO3 account since I decided to turn this into a series. It's a grade school AU I self-indulgently made. Basically ginhiji meet as kids and grow up together and yea. Stuff. **  
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 **Disclaimer:** Do not own Gintama and it's characters.

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 **Pilot Chapter**

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"My turn!" A small hand raised from the makeshift human-circle formed in the school courtyard. The owner of the hand, a young girl with pigtails hanging off each side of her head, volunteered herself into the centre of the circle, declaring, "Gintoki! Truth or dare!"

Gintoki, who stood with a finger up one nostril, passed a passive glance to the third-grader standing at the centre. He shrugged and decided, "Truth."

"C'mon, you always pick truth," the dark-haired boy standing to the left of Gintoki whined, "You're so boring."

Gintoki pouted, turning to shove the offensive boy on the shoulder, tactfully using the hand that had paid a visit to his nasal cavity. "Stupid! Truth is always the way to go if you wanna last!"

The boy's, Hijikata's, nose wrinkled at the place of contact on his shoulder. "Stop wiping your boogers on me!"

"So whaddya want from me," Gintoki ignored the shouting from his side and turned to his female classmate.

"Tell us who you have a crush on!" she giggled, hands reaching up to cover her pursed lips. The kids around the circle 'ooh-ed' and 'aah-ed,' in essence giggling in the way children did when they teased and put the spotlight onto another classmate.

Gintoki huffed, shoulders hunched up but otherwise remaining emotionless. He turned his head slightly to his left to gauge the reaction on his best friend's face, which was a skeptical pinch of his brows and an uncertain line on his lips. He uttered a proud, "Nobody."

Hijikata's expression smoothed into his default displeased frown, assenting, "Obviously, because girls are annoying."

On cue, the female participants in the circle voiced their disbelief and regret, in essence 'kyaa-ed' in the way children did when they were upset and scared.

"That's mean, Hijikata-kun! Even though we like you!"

Hijikata flushed in the face, hands clenching at his sides while he turned away from the attention and reminded Gintoki, "It's your turn now!"

Gintoki blinked at Hijikata's flustered appearance, smiling his initial boyish grin at the redness in his friend's cheeks and wanting to poke at them to annoy him, but when a genius idea popped in his mind, the innocent smile turned into a devious smirk. "I dare you to eat grass!"

"What! No!" Hijikata shouted in protest, arms crossing in front of him.

"Don't be a loser and just do it!" Gintoki jeered, jabbing a thumb toward his chest, "I would do it because I'm a man and I'm awesome, just saying."

"Yeah, do it!" someone else from the circle shouted, which in turn elicited more jeers in favour, successfully pressuring the third-grade Hijikata into wrenching a fistful of grass from the earth.

"Fine, I'll do it!"

He brought his fistful of moist grass bits over his mouth, head tipped back and precariously he hung there just like that, hand shaking above his opened mouth, eyes squeezed shut. Seconds passed, children gathered around Hijikata with hands clutching into anxious grips. Gintoki, ever the impatient one, would have taken it upon himself to pry the hesitant boy's fingers open himself if it made the wait a millisecond shorter, but before that disaster could happen, Hijikata threw down the scattered straws of grass on his tongue and attempted to swallow. The grass bits refused to go down his throat with one gulp, clinging onto the roof of his mouth and the back of his tongue in the most unpleasant feeling. Hijikata gagged on the roughness and the bitter taste, hands clamping onto his mouth—not sure whether to throw up or throw down the atrocity in his mouth.

Gintoki burst out with roaring laughter at the tearful look on his face. Hijikata painstakingly chose to force himself to swallow down the grass, lest the others started teasing him about his very much intact manliness. He hacked and coughed once he was sure the bits were all gone.

"There, I ate it!" Hijikata gave the whole group a defiant glare and then straightened himself. "Now, you," Hijikata pointed to the first child who had merrily gone along and supported Gintoki's idea, "truth or dare."

"D-Dare!"

"Go knock your head against Gintoki's as hard as possible. It better be hard!"

"Hey! Why me!" Gintoki screamed his objection.

"Because then you'd both be hurting and I'd be happy," Hijikata smirked, a brow poised authoritatively on his forehead.

After more whining from both parties, the deed was done with a satisfying bang of skulls.

"I truth or dare you back!" the boy, with a very red forehead, said to Hijikata.

"…Dare…"

The boy laughed victoriously, hands propped on each hip and eyes creased into crescent orbs. "I dare you to kiss Ki-chan," he announced with mirth.

Hijikata fell silent, eyes darting between the now blushing-very-hard pig-tailed girl and the boy who had triumphantly declared his verdict. Hijikata was about to begin to refuse when he remembered the words Gintoki had mocked him with when he had first refused the grass-eating dare. He chanced another glance at the bashful girl, his hands getting clammier at each furtive glance she returned.

"O-Okay," he resigned to his fate and inched over to the girl. The boys all hooted and screamed at the prospect of their kiss.

Hijikata gulped his nerves away once he stood before her, face to face. He was not sure how to pace himself, so he awkwardly leaned forward and screwed his eyes shut, hoping he would meet her lips and not miss like a fool.

"You can't!" Gintoki screamed in his full outdoor voice and Hijikata came to meet the palm of Gintoki's hand when he blinked his eyes open. Gintoki repeated, "You can't!"

Hijikata, confused and probably misunderstanding something, did not know how to react, so he defaulted to his automatic defy-Gintoki mode. "Why the hell not!"

"B-Because she's a girl and girls have cooties!" Gintoki stated his stance on the matter with his hand still hanging between Hijikata and the girl.

"W-What are you saying stupid Gintoki!" the offended girl, annoyed with the interruption lashed in response, "Are you saying he should kiss a boy then?"

"No! Boys are," Gintoki paused to look at the boys standing around the broken circle, not knowing how to finish that sentence. "He just can't!"

The girl pouted, "You're just being ridiculous now! Then he can't kiss anybody in his whole life!"

Gintoki flailed his limbs about in a desperate need to defend his stance and uttered the first thing that came to mind before he could decide whether it was a good idea or not, "Well, then he can kiss me!"

Voices hushed over the group, children looked to and fro with awe and wonder, but Gintoki's first reaction to his own words was to whip his head around to see how Hijikata had reacted to his lapse in judgement, despite his own neck-deep flush. Like a contagious fire, Hijikata's face blushed a rosy red when he took in the tomato countenance Gintoki tried his best to ignore.

"B-But you said you didn't like anybody!" the girl called out again, pointing an accusatory finger at Gintoki.

"I-I don't!" Though this time his tone was tentative.


	2. 1

Friday afternoon, after school lets out and the grounds empty children into the streets and parks. Gintoki sits himself in the sandbox, digging his legs into the sinking grains, wondering how far down he can go. He continues to entertain himself doing so, burying himself about thighs deep before a boisterous voice breaks him out of his focus.

"Hey look, the adopted kid is tryna bury himself alive!"

 _Them._ Kids in the next class: a round boy, finger pointed at him and bouncing with his laughter; a shorter boy clutching at the straps of his red backpack, snickering too; and a boy with his fingers circled around his eyes, ogling at him like he's a spectacle to be ogled at.

 _Annoying idiots._ He shakes his legs free from their confines, focus ruined and fun destroyed.

"What, don't stop now, orphan."

Gintoki turns to glare at them, though he doesn't feel like fighting with anybody today. He would have left without confronting them, if another voice had not stolen his attention again.

"Shut up, fatty! You're gonna cause another earthquake!"

 _Ah._ This one is a familiar voice. Gintoki peers behind the idiots to find Hijikata running up to the sandbox. Hijikata stands right beside him, growling at the kids to go away.

"What are you gonna do, tell your brother?"

Hijikata clenches his jaw and tightens his fingers into a fist, and if Gintoki had not already burst forward to throw the first punch, he would have. The two other round on Gintoki to pull him off of the round boy, but Hijikata throws handfuls of sand down both of their underwear, sending them dancing away with jiggling legs. When Gintoki is finally done with the round boy, Hijikata throws another handful of sand in his face and yells at him to never show his face again.

Gintoki goes back to the sandbox, where he can still see the two holes he dug his legs up from.

"If you were gonna fight, why didn't you do it earlier?" Hijikata crouches in front of the two holes, watching as Gintoki tries to dig them deeper again.

"Because it would be three against one." He fits his legs into those holes once more.

"Since when did you care about number advantage?" Hijikata helps him pat the sand down around his hips.

"I don't." He grins, pulling the collar of Hijikata's shirt down and dropping a fistful of sand down the gap.

"Hey!" the boy splutters, falling forward with the action and finding his nose stuck in the mound of sand by Gintoki's hips.


	3. 2

"Do you really have to do this?"

A hushing finger tacked onto pouting lips.

"Yes, I do."

And that finger persists until those lips frown, but consent, "Fine."

The two boys linger at the back of the single file of children shuffling out of the classroom. Deliberately dragging their feet, they watch with sweaty palms and bated breaths as the last child before them disappears around the turn. Once they are sure that none of their classmates are coming around to look for the, the two run back to their classroom, quietly shutting the door behind them.

"Okay," Gintoki whispers, eyes trained on their teacher's podium in front of the blackboard. "I saw him bring it in during lunch time. Don't worry."

Hijikata trots along after him. "I don't even care if it's there or not."

Gintoki peers into the little shelf space inside the back of the podium and a toothy grin breaks across his face. He drags his hand along the blue plastic of the ice box, fingers eager to flip the lock on the lid. "Told ya!"

"Gintoki," the dark-haired boy looks on as he darts sporadic glances toward the door, "hurry."

Gintoki doesn't appear to hear him, still frantically digging through the container, muttering, "Red or blue? No, maybe an orange."

The longer the boy takes deciding on the colour, the more frantic Hijikata's warnings become. "Gintoki!"

"Okay, okay! I got you a blue!" Gintoki slaps the lid down, sloppily fastening the lock. He grabs the two popsicles—orange and blue—in either hand and runs after Hijikata, who had the door edging apart the moment the treats were clutch between Gintoki's fingers. Again, they make sure the door is shut behind them before tip-toeing down the hallway. "Hide in the washroom!"

"They'll notice we're not there if we don't hurry." But he still follows the other into the boy's washroom.

"We'll just tell them we were in the washroom." Gintoki says around the popsicle between his lips.

"Together?" Hijikata grimaces, peeling the plastic off his frozen treat. "Only girls go together."

"Who cares? If you hurry and eat that, we can go back before anyone even notices." And to turn that speculation into a statement, Gintoki pops the wooden stick out of his mouth, cleaned off of all orange ice.

Hijikata gawks, mouth hanging, as Gintoki disposes of the popsicle stick. "How did you eat that so fast?"

"Like this," Gintoki leans over, takes half of Hijikata's popsicle in his mouth and bites. As he pulls away, he tips his head back to capture the runaway juice pooling at one corner of his mouth. Hijikata watches with a twitch beneath his eye; he isn't especially eager to devour the blue ice, but the notion of Gintoki doing whatever he wants with his food always rubs him the wrong way.

He shoves the last bit in his mouth, slurping the cold blue-raspberry pop. He tugs the stick out and throws it into the garbage. "Let's go."

They leave their hiding, running down the stairs to get to their gym class. Slipping through the gymnasium doors just as their classmates were breaking off into pairs for stretching exercises. The two find a corner far away from the teacher. The rest of the period goes on languidly: laps around the track, soccer drills on the grass field, a match in the last half of the period.

The excitement comes afterwards, when they return to their classroom for homeroom before school lets out. Their homeroom teacher brings out the icebox, immediately attracting the attention of every student in the room. The kids cheer, anticipating that they will be treated to something cold right after a gym class. Hijikata feels his palms get clammy as the teacher opens up the icebox and starts distributing the popsicles to the students. He receives the popsicle passed to him when his teacher goes by him. He wonders if he can stomach a second popsicle as he turns to looks over at Gintoki, who is already tearing into his red popsicle without a thought. It's not until the teacher reaches the last row of students that he notices that he is two short. He distributes the remainder, giving the lone boy who stands empty-handed an apologetic look.

The teacher returns to the head of the class, face stern. "Alright. Who snuck in here to steal two popsicles when they shouldn't have?"

Hijikata's hands feel slightly moister and quite a bit colder. He tries not to look over at Gintoki, though he does wonder what kind of face his friend is making.

"One was for myself, and one was for Hasegawa-kun. Do you guys realize whatever you did was very unfair?" The teacher turns to eye each and every student as he speaks.

"Can anyone tell me if they have seen someone sneak in here before gym?"

A girl raises her hand. And at this point, Hijikata's whole body is washed with a nervous cold wetness.

"Gintoki and Hijikata-kun came in late for gym!"

This time Hijikata couldn't help darting a helpless glance at Gintoki, who looks to be sweating from the roots of his curly white hair.

The teacher narrows his eyes at Gintoki. "Did you two take popsicles from the icebox?"

Gintoki keeps his lips sealed, batting his eyelids at he looks steadily at his teacher.

Hijikata finds himself fidgeting as the tension in the room thickens. "Um, Hasegawa can have mine. I didn't open it yet."

"Gintoki," their teacher utters, unrelenting. "Did you, or did you not?"

"Yeah," he finally admits, still batting his lashes without a semblance of regret. "Sorry."

The corners of their teacher's lips tick. "Detention for both of you. Hijikata-kun, you're going to write an apology essay for Hasegawa-kun. Gintoki… You're going to be cleaning out the supply room _and_ writing an apology essay for me. Class dismissed."

It takes about half an hour for Hijikata to write up a half-sincere apology letter to Hasegawa. He takes it, shows it to his teacher, takes it back, and shoves it into Hasegawa's locker. It takes less than thirty seconds for him to run down the corridor to find Gintoki heaving old textbooks between shelves in the supply room.

"Was that really worth it?"

"It was worth the look on Madao's face at the very least."


	4. 3

It's lunch time. He's got his lunchbox open, and Gintoki sitting across the table, helping himself to his food as per usual. He wonders, not for the first time, when this has become his everyday life. As far as he can remember, he has been in pretty good control of his daily activities. Never would he have allowed a thing like some strange kid with white hair poking his chopsticks around in _his_ lunch. He doesn't share too well, his brother says. Personally, he thinks he doesn't share at all.

But then this.

 _This_ everyday, and he doesn't even know how, or when, or why.

He literally has to fight off Gintoki's chopsticks to defend his last piece of eggroll. "How are we even friends?"

Gintoki shrugs, dividing his attention between his own lunchbox and the strawberry milk he nagged off of the lunch lady. "You were the new kid. Transfers tend to be popular; don't know how you got stuck with me."

Thinking back, how did he end up with Gintoki? He does remember being surround by kids the first couple of days, as annoying as it was. "I think you stole my pudding at lunch."

Gintoki snorts. "I think you said I had weird hair."

"You do."

He gets a kick to his shin. "Why am I even friends with you?"

"'Cause you don't have any other friends."

"Not like you have any, either."

He returns the kick. "I don't because your No-Friends-Curse passed onto me."

"Well now you're stuck as my No-Friends-Curse buddy, suck it up."


End file.
